ARGO: Two Oscars and a Political Aftermath

The latest production of Ben Affleck, Argo, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and was considered by many critics as Affleck's best movie. Dana Stevens calls it "easily the most cohesive and technically accomplished of Affleck’s three films so far." And to be honest, the movie accomplishes its purpose.

Argo tells the story of the escape of six Americans who left the U.S. Embassy in Tehran right before it was overrun, and were offered shelter by Canadian diplomats.

Affleck offers a good dosage of documentary style espionage, continued by a good satire of Hollywood movie industry, and for the last part he combines both for an intriguing climax, with an enemy depicted intelligent enough to create a thrilling finale, which ends in an interesting airport chase. Now it's time to add to it a bit of "this all really happened", well except for that climax, and then you have an Oscar winner. But again, it's a movie's nature to dramatize an escape which was "as smooth as silk", as Antonio Mendez, the man that Affleck plays in the film, explains himself. Otherwise there will be no movie, or at least not a Hollywood one.

Not to forget that Affleck has done a good job of recreating the late 70's of Iran considering that he has never been to Iran and was not able to shoot within its borders. The movie is shot in Turkey, but the buildings and bazaar are quite like the iranian version of late 70's.

Ben Affleck insisted that the film is only loosely "based on a true story" and as so, it doesn't make sense to do a fact-check with the history of the hostage crisis, although some have done so. But at the same time, it's impossible to deny the fact that it was a true story, with real people, real lives and real states at stake. So, the political interpretations of the movie were not few, ranging from critics to diplomats. These interpretations took a more serious tone when Argo was given the Academy Award for the Best Picture by the First Lady of United States, Michelle Obama.

First complaints came after the premiere of the movie in Toronto, when Ken Taylor, Canadian Ambassador in Tehran in 1979, said "that we're portrayed as innkeepers who are waiting to be saved by the CIA." According to Mr. Taylor the plan was principally executed by Canadians. It was him who cabled Washington to begin the rescue plan, and who bought the tickets, which in the movie are bought in the last moment by the US government. Canadians even scouted Tehran's airport and sent people in and out to obtain detailed information about visas and controls in the airport. None of these appears in the movie and Canadian role is downplayed in Argo. Maybe that explains why Ben Affleck felt obliged to "thank Canada" upon receiving the award.

On the other hand, the film shows that Britain and New Zealand turned their back to the six Americans, which is considered as false by diplomats from both countries who were present in Tehran during the hostage crisis.

It's no surprise that Hollywood wants to glorify the American role in the hostage crisis. From this point of view, Argo can be classified as one of those movies in which the american hero saves the day, just in a more modern and realistic way, not fighting the classic Hollywood villain.

It's not the first time, a movie related to Iran wins an award at Oscars. Last year "A Separation" by Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Iranian movie to win an Oscar. This time an American film about Iran wins the Best Picture Award, reflecting the origins of more than thirty years of frustrated and fully blocked Iranian-American relations and to some extent, the growing interest inside the United States to address one of the most emblematic issues of U.S. foreign policy.

Editor-in-chief

Touraj Jafarieh, co-founder of Open Society, is a journalist specialized in multimedia communications, with extensive experience on blogs, social networks and web journalism. He has several years of experience, working with newspapers, news agencies, radio and television. Lately he has been focusing on "The phenomenon of blogging and freedom of expression: The paradigmatic case of Iran".

Education

Ph.D. in Spanish Language and its Literatures, M.Sc. in Professional Multimedia Journalism, M.A. in Contemporary Literature, all at Complutense University of Madrid, B.A. in Spanish Philology at Allameh Tabatabai University of Tehran

Languages

English, Spanish, French, Persian

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